


J is for Jamaica

by romanticalgirl



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted 11-6-08</p>
    </blockquote>





	J is for Jamaica

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 11-6-08

There were dreams once of Jamaica - dreams of fruit and flowers, of scantily clad women and rum overflowing. He remembers, back before Simpson and after Horatio, the first days of Justinian and aboard Indefatigable, when there were exotic worlds he could find and visit, where there were foreign lands made of sun and beaches and not war and death. 

The reality is far less appealing. 

He’s assured by the heat he feels pressing into his skin, bleeding into his wound, that the sun and beaches are there, that the rum and women are the sounds he hears beyond his prison walls. He knows that somewhere out there, there is the promise of paradise for men who don’t know the dark emptiness of the bowels of the ship, who don’t know the secrets and lies that hide in the shadows. He looks over at Bush and knows that he’ll see a woman, skin as black as Hornblower’s coffee, tongue as pink as tropical flowers. He knows that Horatio will find cards and money, back street and alley games and rich gentlemen possessed of too much money and too little luck or skill or intelligence as Hornblower.

And whatever it is that Archie dreams of in the restless moments of sweat and horror that shake him and draw wretched noises from him that lure Mr. Bush into shaking him awake, it is not Jamaica.

Not anymore.


End file.
